


The Flight to Siberia (and the Silence Between Us)

by KerriLovegood



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky Barnes Gets a Hug, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-14
Updated: 2016-12-14
Packaged: 2018-09-08 13:11:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8846365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KerriLovegood/pseuds/KerriLovegood
Summary: Mid-Civil War fix-it fic. An expansion on the scene in the quinjet as Bucky and Steve fly alone to Siberia. They are pressed to confront their own guilt, sorrow, and care for the other as they each grapple with where they are and what they have done. 
"'I don't know if I'm worth all this, Steve,' he hears Bucky admit, voice halting and low...He remembers the horror on Bucky’s face after he woke up as himself again, arm stuck in the vice, asking what he had done. The words now manifest thoughts he knew Bucky had, yet it shocks him more than he thought it would....Without hesitating, Steve turns back to the controls and presses a few buttons. The VI’s screen pops up the message “Autopilot engaged.” At that, he stands up, walking evenly with the smooth sailing of the craft, and sits in the seat directly beside Bucky. He doesn’t buckle himself in, and instead perches on the side and leans forward, facing the man he has challenged the world for."





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I found Civil War to be a divisive film among Steve and Bucky fans, but one common place of discontent present among all of us was a need for more. After waiting two years from Winter Soldier to Civil War, a lot hinged on the resolution and clashing of emotions that would come with Steve and Bucky's reunion. With more and more reflection, I almost felt cheated of the emotional payoff I had so desperately been hoping for. Mostly, I didn't believe that Steve would say nothing after where the quinjet scene cut in the film itself. He is not the best at navigating emotions (as he has a lot to work through himself) but he would not leave the conversation in such a way. So here's my attempt to feel out everything that I wanted to be addressed. I added some to Bucky's character, as I personally headcanon him as belonging to a Jewish immigrant family. Trigger warning for some suicidal ideation. Hope you enjoy!

Everything is quiet, the kind that settles in the gut. Seated in the quinjet, Steve feels hyper aware of every part of his body: the weight of his uniform and the way it bunches up behind his knees, sweat building up beneath it as his chest swells steadily with even breaths. There is fatigue, of course, from a brutal fight he never wanted, but for now he feels a nothingness. He’s used to stillness, to controlling his body even when he sometimes feels separate from it. Over the years he has also become acquainted with silence, and keeping himself as company in times he felt that the world was something to drown in. 

 

Even the engine of the quinjet is just barely breaking the silence. It was designed for stealth, and it fits its purpose. Both he and the man seated behind him are acquainted with silence, and with each other. The clouds are hanging just above them, dull and grey, dimly lighting their faces in waxy shades.

 

His gloved hands are on the controls, gripping tightly and staring ahead as if he can fix the sky by staring at it. Their voices are soft when they speak infrequently. Blurs of mountains pass by, too quick to identify the crags of each peak...It’s almost funny, Steve thinks, how he has spent two years searching for the man he is now alone with, and he doesn’t know what to say. 

 

“I don’t know if I’m worth all this, Steve,” he hears Bucky admit, voice halting and low. Steve feels his breath catch in his chest, mouth dropping open slightly in amazement as he feels a hollow grow inside him. He feels weightless, the metal of the quinjet disappearing around him for just a moment as he is let loose to the winds. He remembers the horror on Bucky’s face after he woke up as himself again, arm stuck in the vice, asking what he had done. The words now manifest thoughts he knew Bucky had, yet it shocks him more than he thought it would.

 

He turns his head slightly, looking over his shoulder but not making eye contact. “What you did all those years…” Nothing he could say seems like enough. “It wasn’t you. You didn’t have a choice.”

 

“I know,” Bucky replies, and Steve feels himself turning to see Bucky’s face. He looks anywhere but at Steve until his final word, and the blue of his eyes seems to finally reflect his age - his true age. “But I did it.”

 

Without hesitating, Steve turns back to the controls and presses a few buttons. The VI’s screen pops up the message “Autopilot engaged.” At that, he stands up, walking evenly with the smooth sailing of the craft, and sits in the seat directly beside Bucky. He doesn’t buckle himself in, and instead perches on the side and leans forward, facing the man he has challenged the world for.

 

“Steve…” Bucky begins, sighing and staring at the ground. His jaw is set so hard his teeth must be grinding. 

 

“Buck,” is all he says, and the other man’s eyes widen marginally, as though struck by his gentleness. A few moments pass like this, with Bucky staring somewhere near his feet and Steve’s eyes not leaving his face. “I know you, and so I know you don’t want to hear this, but you were a victim.”

 

Bucky huffs out a breath, his face contorting into something between a smile and a grimace. He opens his mouth for a moment, pauses, and closes it again. Steve reaches out tentatively and places his hand on Bucky’s shoulder. Bucky doesn’t flinch at the touch, and looks at him briefly, almost timidly. Steve smiles gently up at him, and he could be in 1944 again, giving orders to the Commandos. 

 

“I’ve been meaning to ask,” he says, swiftly changing the topic as the moment fades. “About Bucharest…”

 

“I know what you’re going to say,” Bucky cuts him off. He presses his lips together as though choosing his words and swallowing them down. “It was an old safehouse that... _ they _ had used before, the location still just hardwired in my brain. It’s  _ all _ just still in my mind.” His voice cracks and his head falls so he stares determinedly at his lap. His hands fidget restlessly, clenching and unclenching the fist of his metal hand. Steve squeezes his shoulder but says nothing.

 

“You want to believe it was Romania because of my family,” Bucky says, and it’s not a question. “So do I.”

 

“Maybe it was, at least partially.” Steve offers, dropping his hand from his shoulder. “You’re still you.”

 

“Am I?” he retorts, words biting. He shakes his head. “Do you think I went to, what, find home? I didn’t remember Romania. We moved to New York when I was so young. God, I must’ve been...I was…” He trails off helplessly.

 

“Two years old,” Steve finishes for him.

 

At that, Bucky almost laughs. He closes his eyes for a moment, pressing his lips together again. “Yeah,” he whispers.

 

“I’m sorry,” Steve says.

 

“Don’t-” he looks for a moment like he’ll continue the sentence before he slumps back in the seat, wordless.

 

Minutes pass in silence, and despite the fact that they are practically touching, Bucky begins to feel miles away. Steve doesn't know how to navigate this foreign kind of quiet; it is not the ease of two people comfortable with each other. Bucky stares at his lap, mouthing something to himself, with strands of his dark hair falling in his face. Steve has a wandering instinct to brush it away from his eyes, but forces it down. Time seems to hurl at him in waves, persistent and threatening in its swells and crashes against them.

Bucky’s movements stop, his mouth forming less and less silent words to himself. For a while he just breathes. When all seems at a standstill, Bucky says slowly “Steve, what day is it?”

 

He tells it to him. Bucky seems to chew it over, then repeats it to himself like a reminder.

 

Steve says it again, understanding the anchoring process. He says Bucky’s name, and his own. The man across from him repeats it. He says a few words in Romanian and Russian, and Steve is unable to pick out anything from the minimal knowledge he has of both languages, but he nods anyway. Bucky slowly undoes the flight restraints across his chest, and breathes deeply, rubbing his hand of flesh across his face. And he turns to Steve.

 

“We’re in the year 2016, Steve,” he says with the slightest hint of amazement. 

 

“Yeah, we are,” and Steve almost laughs, unable to help himself from grinning. “Yeah we are, pal. Gonna have to get you a walker.”

 

Bucky finally smiles. “As if you have room to talk, _ punk. _ ”

 

Steve shrugs, still smiling slightly. “We’re just a pair of old soldiers. Still, you do have a year on me.”

 

“Who knows who’s older now, with all the freezing and refreezing.” Bucky says, his face falling slightly as he thinks. He pauses and takes a shuddering breath. “You know, there were days I wanted to hate you, for making me remember. And there were days I wanted to blow my brains out. Never could bring myself to do it, either thing.”

 

Steve’s jaw tightens, looking as though he has been pulled taut. “What do you feel now?”

 

“Now?” Bucky takes another deep breath, and when he turns to Steve again his eyes are red and bothered. “Now I feel...like I really missed you.”

 

His shoulders sag and his whole body looks deflated as Steve tentatively places his hands on both of Bucky’s shoulders. Steve is unsure of what to do; his heart is pumping faster and faster, as if he has run through the years to this moment. He does not know what Bucky wants or if he should be touching him at all. Bucky looks up like something hunted and afraid. He looks smaller, younger, as if they’re just two kids in Brooklyn again.

 

Something in his face changes and softens when he meets Steve’s eyes. He practically launches himself into Steve’s arms, and they sway slightly with the weight of it as they settle into an awkward embrace on the edges of their seats. Bucky wraps his arms around Steve’s middle, squeezing to a point of near discomfort, with his face pressed into Steve’s shoulder. 

 

Wrapping his arms around him, crossing this gap of seventy years with every second of it, Steve closes his eyes and presses his lips to the top of Bucky’s head, and he’s too wrapped up in the  _ now _ of his senses to think consciously of trying to remember this moment. Bucky’s entire body shakes involuntarily in his arms, and Steve finally whispers back in a voice that wobbles. 

  
“I missed you, too, Buck.” 


	2. Chapter 2

Many miles of the earth have stretched on below them as they rest together. Steve sees the grey-white of the clouds whisking away, obstructed by the silhouette of the empty pilot’s chair in front of him. Some days he still has trouble wrapping his mind around the concept of autopilot systems; it feels like a ghost in the place of a captain. 

 

Bucky sits beside him still, but he has gone quiet the closer they have gotten to the abandoned Hydra base. Steve understands, as best as he can, and he has not tried to persuade Bucky into speech. His left hand sits on the seat, inches from Bucky’s right one. He wonders more than once about placing his hand on the other man’s. Bucky’s left arm, shining even in the dim light of the cabin, fidgets restlessly, bunching into a fist and unclenching itself. He tightens his jaw, and it’s not quite the same as how he used to decades ago, as he stared at the street below from a rusted fire escape, but it’s close enough.

 

They have spoken, and they have sat in silence, and both things have said as much. 

 

“Your friend, Wanda,” Bucky says slowly, turning to look at Steve. “What’s her story?”

 

Steve’s mouth quirks up slightly. “She was from Sokovia, her and her brother, Pietro. Two kids, caught up in political riots and things so much bigger than them, trying to survive and trying to make a difference.”

 

Bucky almost laughs. “Sounds familiar.”

 

Steve closes his eyes. “Except they didn’t have a Doctor Erskine. They screwed up and  _ volunteered _ for Hydra.”

 

“ _ What? _ ” Bucky asks in shock. “Hydra doesn’t  _ take _ volunteers.”

 

“I know, Buck,” he replies evenly. “They didn’t know what they were signing up for. I mean, they’re  _ jewish, _ too. Hydra promised them things, and they felt like they had no other way. She told me once about the things they did to her and her brother. Even if they were volunteers in the beginning, they became prisoners.”

 

“ _ That _ sounds more like Hydra,” Bucky says quietly.

 

“But Wanda and Pietro helped us, in the end,” Steve continues. “Saved Sokovia --from a mess we created in the first place. They became Avengers, and...Pietro died. Like a hero, but that doesn’t change anything.”

 

Bucky looks down at his hands for a moment. “There a grave for him?” he asks.

 

“Yeah, Wanda wanted him buried as soon as possible, but Sokovia was too chaotic. He has a simple grave outside the Avengers compound. She said he wouldn’t want anything grand.”

 

“Yeah. It’s an old Jewish idea, that we’re all equal in death,” Bucky says, and then pauses. He turns to Steve again. “You ever see the fucking graves they built for us in Arlington?”

 

Steve rubs his temple in annoyance. “SHIELD wouldn’t let me for a while, thinking it’d be too damaging. As if there’s any gentle way to hand the 21st century to someone.” He cracks a smile. “Clint told me they used to have a guard outside mine like the Unknown Soldier. They got rid of it once they found out I wasn’t dead.” He stops, seeming to realize something, and then his expression is almost hopeful. “You went there?” he asks.

 

Bucky tries to smile. “It was one of the first places I went to, after…” his voice trails off. “Well, after.” 

 

“I’m sorry you had to go by yourself,” Steve says gently.

 

“It was something I needed to do.”

 

Steve nods.

 

“It was too much.” There’s something sharp in his voice now, and Steve feels the edge of it in the space between them.

 

“I know.”

 

Bucky tears his eyes away from him and stares out the front window into the vast fields of white. He speaks slowly. “Steve, I could...I could’ve killed you two years ago.” His silver hand with its nimble fingers taps restlessly against his thigh, and he drags it backwards, pulling it out of his field of vision.

 

“You  _ didn’t. _ ”

 

“I  _ wanted _ to.  _ They  _ wanted me to. I don’t know.”

 

“But you  _ saved _ my life.”

 

“After I shot you five times, Steve, God!”

 

“And I  _ suffocated _ you.” Bucky shakes his head and there’s a long pause as Steve gathers his thoughts and his yearnings. “Buck, please look at me.”

 

The other man closes his eyes tight and drops his head into his hands for a moment. Then, he pushes strands of dark hair out of his face and slowly meets his gaze. Steve feels his breathing hitch with the overwhelming  _ blue _ of Bucky’s eyes. His voice is lower than he means it to be, thick with emotion. “They had you for seventy years, and to get you to follow orders they had to take  _ you  _ away. I’ve read the files, I know just  _ some _ of what they did. And they told you to kill me. Instead, you jumped right after me, and you pulled me from that river. And you walked away from them. You  _ beat them.  _ Not only that -- you know what that tells me?”

 

Bucky’s face contorts in pain. “Shut up,” he choked out.

 

“ _ They couldn’t change you. _ ”

 

At that, Bucky makes a small sound, as if he’s choking on Steve’s words. He opens his mouth and breathes deeply. He says nothing, but slowly reaches out his hand of flesh and lightly places it on top of Steve’s. Both of their hands are ungloved, resting for a moment, familiar and foreign all at once, and Bucky squeezes his hand gently. He cannot give words, and Steve does not need them.

 

The quinjet begins a descent, smooth as it always is, and there are rocky flashes of brown amidst the white. Mountains rise in the unending blizzard of Siberia. Bucky squeezes his hand again, this time with something more fearful and urgent. Steve looks at him, and his posture has become rigid, as though seizing up at the sight of all the winter. They’re getting close.

 

“I can’t imagine how it feels going back there,” he says as Bucky continues to stare ahead. “But you’re not alone. I’m gonna go turn off autopilot. Get ready for landing.”

 

The entrance is easy to spot, despite the immensity of the area and its few visual clues. As they get closer to the ground, Zemo’s tracks are visible in the snow, all leading up to his parked craft. Bucky says in a strained voice that he recognizes the area. Steve hears his breathing quicken. He knows that Zemo and the five other winter soldiers are all beneath this fortress in the snow, waiting. There is no choice but to push ahead.

 

Landing is smooth, the area designed as a landing pad for hydra crafts, and the quinjet has more maneuverability than most ships. They load up in silence, Bucky taking from Natasha’s weapon locker, nodding as he inspects her snipers. There’s almost a familiarity there, and Steve wonders if it is for the weapon or its owner. He does not ask as he straps his helmet on and grabs his shield. 

 

The ramp leads down into the snow, facing the entrance to the facility. It gapes open like the mouth of some incomprehensibly large creature, a chill already creeping into the craft. They stand side-by-side at the top of the ramp, a foot apart, and despite the daunting task that lies ahead, he relishes for just a moment how natural this feels. Despite everything, here they are again, the two of them, feeling small and like giants all at the same time.

 

The cold sparks a memory in his mind, and pulling it forth is all he can think to do to look at this monster and make it approachable. “You remember that time we had to ride back from Rockaway Beach in the back of that freezer truck?”

 

“Was that that time,” Bucky hardly pauses, his mouth pulling into a smile as he raises an eyebrow at Steve, “you used our train money...to buy hot dogs?”

 

Their sarcastic dynamic slips back into place so easily, and Steve covers his joy at Bucky’s recollection. He reels instantly, shifting the blame, “You blew three bucks trying to win that stuffed bear for a redhead.” He remembers the slight jealousy with that memory, but it’s still a good one. 

 

It is as though his words highlight other areas of the memory In Bucky’s mind, and he tilts his head slightly as if drawing up the image of the woman. “What was her name again?”

 

“Dolores. You called her Dot.” He knows the nickname may be easier to recall.

 

Bucky shakes his head. “She’s got to be a hundred years old by now.”

 

He reaches out and puts a hand on Bucky’s shoulder, a wry smile still spreading across his cheeks. “So are we, pal.” They’re both smiling, and they’re warm, and Bucky drops his gaze to the ground as if some dark thought came over him. It is hard to joke without remembering the chasm of decades lost to them. Steve regretfully lets go of his shoulder.

 

“He can’t have been here more than a few hours,” he says, voice authoritative again.

 

“Long enough to wake them up,” Bucky says. 

 

He nods, casting a lingering look at Bucky again. “You ready?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

They walk down the ramp, guards up and steps nearly in sync. For a brief moment, he expects to hear the clunky steps of Dugan or the lighter pace of Morita making their way behind them, but the siberian winds carry no other sounds.

 

Then, there’s a slight crunch when their boots press into the snow, powdery on top and compact just a couple inches below the surface. They’re only a few dozen meters from the entrance, and they cover ground quickly, Steve taking the lead. They find the door, an impersonal thing of thick metal, and it’s already open. It sits slightly ajar, as though Zemo is mocking them. 

 

Something tugs at Steve’s insides and he turns to look at Bucky a few steps behind him. His eyes are frantic, though he hides it well. He takes deep breaths, steadying himself. Steve turns his back on the door.

 

“Are you okay going back in there?” he asks, words firm and eyes gentle.

 

“No, I’m not,” Bucky admits, eyes fixed on the door behind Steve, sniper raised. He stares as if he’s waiting for every nightmare to come pouncing forth from the dark opening. “I’m terrified.”

 

Steve takes a cautious step closer to Bucky. “You don’t have to go in there if you don’t want to. All I ask is that you be ready in the jet, to take off with or without me-”

 

“I’m going in, Stevie,” Bucky says, quieting him. He’s taken aback by the nickname for a moment as the other man shakily lowers the borrowed gun and smiles sadly. “Did I not get it into your thick skull enough in ‘38?”

 

Steve tilts his head slightly in confusion, and that just makes Bucky’s smile grow.

  
“I’m with you till the end of the line.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
